1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to an apparatus and method for controlling a short message service (SMS) in a digital portable terminal. More particularly, the present invention relates to an apparatus and method for transmitting/receiving a long message that exceeds a predetermined frame length specified in the SMS.
2. Description of the Related Art
A function known as a Short Message Service (SMS) allows digital portable terminals to transmit/receive a text message from one user to another. To this end, the digital portable terminal should be configured in such a way to write, edit, and transfer the short text messages. The ability to transfer a wireless text message between subscribers using the SMS feature is well received by the digital portable phone users.
The conventional SMS function, however, has a downside in that the capacity to transfer a text message is limited by the amount of data that can be processed by the SMS function. Thus, users are only allowed to transfer a specified length of a text message allowed by the system. In case that a user wishes to transmit a relatively long text message that exceeds the allowable frame length under the SMS function, the user has to divide the long text message into a plurality of short messages to be supported by the SMS function and then manually transmit each divided message one by one.
As mentioned above, the conventional digital portable terminal has some limitation in enabling users to transmit a SMS message due to the limitation of the SMS function in terms of allowable text length.
It is, therefore, an object of the present invention to provide an apparatus and method for transferring a long message which exceeds a predetermined length allowed by the SMS.
The above object can be achieved by providing an apparatus and method for transmitting/receiving a long message using the SMS in a digital portable terminal. Upon request of the SMS message transmission, a message inputted by the user is read, and the read message is divided into a plurality of shorter messages having a predetermined length. A header including a long message ID and a divided message sequence information are generated for each divided message. Each divided message is attached with the header and assembled to be transmitted successively in an appropriate order. Upon receipt of the successive short messages, the long message ID is detected from the header of each short message and the message sequence information is read from the header. The successive short messages are assembled based on the long message ID and the message sequence information and the long message is generated out of the assembled messages and stored. The stored long message is displayed upon user request.
According to one aspect of the present invention, the apparatus includes a means for storing a text message inputted by a user; a means for dividing the text message into a plurality of shorter messages having a predetermined length and for detecting the divided shorter messages; a means for generating and detecting a header information having a long message identification (ID) and a divided message sequence information of the divided shorter messages; and, a means for controlling the message storage, the message divider, and the header generator, for assembling/re-assembling each the shorter message during a transmission/reception mode using the header information, and for controlling the transmission/reception of the shorter messages in a pre-specified order.
According to one aspect of the present invention, the predetermined length mentioned above is a maximum length permitted by the SMS (short message service).
According to another aspect of the present invention, the apparatus includes a message transmitter/receiver means for transmitting/receiving the plurality of shorter messages.
According to one aspect of the present invention, the controller determines whether each of the short message received from the transmitting/receiving end exceeds a predefined SMS length.
According to another aspect of the present invention, the message sequence information represents the order of short messages after segmenting the long message at the transmitting end, and the long message identifier indicates whether one of the short messages belongs to a part of the same long message.
According to a further aspect of the present invention, the controller displays the re-assembled message stored in the storage means in response to a user request.